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Colour meaning (PDF)

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Brief

Using the information on colour meaning, create an album cover using only three colours to create a specific mood or feeling.

You may create your work with illustration or on the computer. Place your final design into your visual diary and write a RATIONALE explaining your colour choices and how they interpret the mood/feeling you are portraying in your design.

Rationale

Heart Beats By Passion Boy

The aim of this task was to demonstrate understanding of colour meaning by creating an album cover. Two specifications came with this task: the cover must only use three colours (specifically, hues) and convey a certain mood which the designer decides. Everything else was up to the designer: album name, artist name, and whether they wanted to create an illustration or use an application.

The above image is the final design: an album cover called 'Heart Beats' by the artist 'Passion Boy'. The main message I wanted to convey was about 'listening to one's heart', and I conveyed this message through an anonymous boy listening to his heart via a pair of earphones. The intended mood of this illustration was along the lines of the fantastic: 'rave', wild and out-there. Because of this, the art style I used was psychedelic art (relating to the effects people experience after consuming a psychedelic drug).

In terms of colour meaning, I've used three colours: cotton candy pink, bubble-gum blue and grey. In this case, the pink reflects the denotative idea of 'heart', and the connotations of joy and (mellow) passion. Blue and grey were more-so used to complement the pink, but their meanings of depth, trust (blue) and ambiguousness (grey) take some effect. Not only did I choose these colourful because of their individual meanings, I also chose them for how they work together. Notice how this triad is associated with candy, meaning they convey a sense of playfulness, (sugar) rush and wildness that is reflected in the shapes of this illustration.

Other than colour, the most dominant design principles/elements were line, shape, symmetry and typography. Line and shape came together to convey the psychedelic art style: thin, defining lines were used to depict detail, while the shapes that the lines created relate to the twisted geometry shown in psychedelic art. This gives the design a twisted, wild look. And because album covers are small images meant to 'package' a set of music pieces, the whole design should look as one (as opposed to a landscape piece), and so symmetry is used to give the design a sense of balance and unity. Furthermore, the typography in this piece was hand-drawn and was to complement the art style I used, with the large 'Heart Beats' placed at the top to wrap all the aforementioned elements together.

These design aspects all came together to create this three-hue, 'fantastic' (mood) image of an unknown boy, smiling as he listens to his heart via a pair of earphones.

From your freelance designer to you, have a nice day.

• Teri